We're introducing a new property, abbreviation , to be more precise in our representation of organisation names. The new property will store shortened entity names such as ANC, AO OUK YKU, or IKEA. Abbreviations and acronyms are often a source of false positive matches in screening systems because they contain limited distinguishing detail. By separating them into a custom field, we're creating the possibility to treat abbreviations differently from full names. For example, we want to make it possible to use precise instead of fuzzy matching on abbreviations, as is already the case with weak aliases (IKEA and IAEA are two very different things).
For backward compatibility, we're currently copying all abbreviation values to the older weakAlias property in order to ensure that existing matching systems and integrations have access to its content. This backstop will be removed in September 2026. Data users are advised to integrate the new property before then.
Other notes:
- Support for abbreviation was added in yente 5.1.0. The property is now considered by the weak alias matching feature.
- Only a small set of abbreviated names have been moved to the new field so far. The distinction will be implemented incrementally over the coming months.
